D&D 5E WotC On Tasha, Race, Alignment: A Several-Year Plan

WotC spoke to the site Dicebreaker about D&D race and alignment, and their plans for the future.

• On of the motivations of the changes [character customization] in Tasha's Cauldron was to decouple race from class.
• The 'tightrope' between honouring legacy and freedom of character choice has not been effectively walked.
• Alignment is turning into a roleplaying tool, and will not be used to describe entire cultures.
• This work will take several years to fully implement.

 

[Umbran]

Or is it bigoted to treat any fantasy creatures in a game as evil monsters to be slain?

So no evil dragons either? I just love to see where all this leads...so not rhetorical....genuinely curious where people draw the line.

There's another point that really needs to be made here:

"Alignment" as D&D knows it... is only used in D&D and its direct descendants. dozens and scores and probably hundreds of role playing games manage to have loads of violent conflict without it.

Ergo, this label isn't necessary.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I enjoy breaking to you, but "Killing people and taking their stuff" is still the gold standard for a lot of groups. Lots of modules. And lots of Adventure paths.

I’m 100% certain you aren’t breaking anything to anyone.

The harsh reality is that you often have little or no choice there is no realistic option, there are no jails and there is no punishment that is practical short of killing. Many D&D worlds are much harsher and judgement much more final than in modern society.

That is a choice, not anything necessary about playing D&D .

They may or not be just as fun, but the adventures themselves tend to assume cool toys are found or taken from others, not purchased or made.

Irrelevant. The point of the adventure is not the loot.

Where do you draw the line? Ogres? Trolls? Minotaurs? Or is it bigoted to treat any fantasy creatures in a game as evil monsters to be slain?

If it’s born in a natural manner, and is a natural creature (even a magical natural creature), it has free will. It’s not complicated.

Minotaurs are a player race. Ogres (at least half-ogres) have been playable in previous editions. Trolls are a bit different from the others, but I would say that the evil ones are the ones that choose to eat humanoids, while others could be neutral or even good. I certainly wouldn't allow someone to play a troll, but I wouldn't 100% restrict trolls to evilness.

I’d allow a troll probably, though they aren’t normal in my worlds.

If I were a betting man, I would bet that Gygax is never going to be cancelled. He created the hobby. Sure, he had some outdated and controversial opinions, but that doesn't negate the fact that he invented D&D. George Washington owned slaves, but we don't cancel him.

We might, eventually. We did Jefferson. And good riddance.

We're all playing a murder simulator.

No, we are not. Don’t speak for other people.

He’s been cancelled for a long time, dude.

This.

Are we still talking about a fantasy game or about the real world? Because to most of us, those are two entirely differently things.

It would be unthinkable of me to hack a person dead with an axe. But my PCs must have slain hundreds of bandits, outlaws, mercenaries, cultists, etc. in D&D.

Really? It’s unthinkable to you to use lethal force to protect your home or town or kin from imminent violence?

What about Tieflings, Genasi, or Vampires? At least two of those were playable pretty early on in 5e's lifetime.

Vampires are dead. The person whose body they’re using is dead. They’re an undead parasite pretending to be sentient. The other two are just a natural born sapient race.

It can however be understood & empathized with or even addressed with local structural changes

Irrelevant in the moment that one is being attacked. You aren’t obliged to not fight back because they might be good but desperate people.

Well, in our legal system, motivations do change the judgement placed on some actions. The categorizations of First Degree Murder and Manslaughter, for example, are largely about motivations - whether you intended to kill or not matters. And if you kill to protect yourself or a third party from imminent harm, you may well not even be charged with a crime!

The motivation of my attacker is wholly irrelevant to the question of my guilt.

 

[Hurin70]

One problem I have with these changes is that there are some settings that have races that are irredeemably evil. In fact, several of these settings heavily influenced D&D. Tolkien's Orcs and Trolls, for example, are inherently evil. They are corruptions of creatures who were once good, true, but they have become morally and metaphysically evil as species. There are not capable of good anymore.

How are we to handle that? Instead of trying to deny their evil nature by making Orcs neutral, or even good, I would prefer if Wizards just made them not black. By that I mean, stop associating 'evil' races with real world cultures -- don't depict evil Orcs with African motifs or icons or equipment. That seems to me to be the better way to solve the problem.

Don't take the evil out of the orcs. Just take out the racism.

 

[Lanefan]

I've had a LG PC run through to 20th level who never murdered anyone.

He killed hundreds of humanoids, giants, magical beasts, aberrations etc and put down an equal number of undead, demons and constructs though.

Those killings were always in self defence (or the defence of others) from a creature that was using or threatening violence.

It boggles my mind how people cant make the distinction between the morally justifiable use of force (Police officers shooting an armed suspect, Soldiers in war engaged in armed conflict, defending yourself from an armed home invader etc) and immoral and unjustifiable use of force (killing POW's, murder, random slaughter, genocide etc) when those very things are universally agreed upon in literally every legal code in existence, and enshrined in the Geneva conventions and elsewhere.

Ask yourself the simple question: 'Would this killing by my PC, in these circumstances, land me in prison for murder in the place where I live, or be a breach of the Geneva conventions prohibiting Murder and Cruel and unusual punishments''. If that answer is Yes, the killing is almost certainly immoral. If the answer is No the killing is almost certainly not immoral.

We all know when a killing would land us in prison, and when it wouldn't. Extend that logic to your games, and you're fine.

Alternatively if you want to stretch that morality and 'kill things just to take their stuff' or simply 'kill them because they exist' or 'murder defenceless evil-doers who pose me no immediate harm' then just write an 'E' in your PCs alignment section and get on with it.

Why people find this so hard to do astounds me.

It doesn't astound me in the least, because (many) people are quite capable of divorcing their real-world ethics from their in-game ethics; and thus do so when playing or thinking about the game. In many ways the game gives players opportunities to do things they'd never in a million years be able to do in reality: cast spells, climb sheer walls, inhabit the mindspace of a being physically different from oneself, etc.; and this includes being able to shrug off the rules and conventions of real-world civilized society and imagine oneself as a thief or a murderer or whatever.

Provided the game ethics and real-world ethics are kept divorced, I fail to see any problem or issue here.

That, and in many cases adventuring parties are put in positions where everything they meet can be assumed hostile until proven otherwise, meaning it only makes sense to attack first and (maybe) ask questions later.

 

[DND_Reborn]

I think I could get behind removing alignment entirely.

That way everyone and everything can be judged on its behavior in the game, rather than a built-in morality.

5E has pretty much already done it. It serves little purpose beyond interaction with a few things, mostly magical or cursed items.

It is one reason why I actually sort of like the personality traits now (they grew on me and no ointment would get rid of them) as those choices do reflect a lot of your "alignment".

Ask your doctor if Debatanol is right for you.

Debatanol changed my life! I never thought I would be happy with prescription medication but I've since switched to Rebatanol (I get money back for it! ).

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

We might, eventually. We did Jefferson. And good riddance.

Jefferson is a different matter from both Gygax and George Washington. People have hated and cancelled him for a long time, and his achievements are significantly less than George Washington's and his racism was much more potent than George Washington's.
I think that everyone will remember Gygax as the creator of D&D and respect him for that, just like they will remember and respect George Washington for freeing America.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

One problem I have with these changes is that there are some settings that have races that are irredeemably evil. In fact, several of these settings heavily influenced D&D. Tolkien's Orcs and Trolls, for example, are inherently evil. They are corruptions of creatures who were once good, true, but they have become morally and metaphysically evil as species. There are not capable of good anymore.

How are we to handle that? Instead of trying to deny their evil nature by making Orcs neutral, or even good, I would prefer if Wizards just made them not black. By that I mean, stop associating 'evil' races with real world cultures -- don't depict evil Orcs with African motifs or icons or equipment. That seems to me to be the better way to solve the problem. Don't make the monsters good; instead, just disassociate them from racist tropes.

Why is that a problem, then? In settings where there are completely evil races, you can just homebrew it as them having to be evil. However, making the core rules be based around any specific, restricting setting is a no go for me.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Jefferson is a different matter from both Gygax and George Washington. People have hated and cancelled him for a long time, and his achievements are significantly less than George Washington's and his racism was much more potent than George Washington's.
I think that everyone will remember Gygax as the creator of D&D and respect him for that, just like they will remember and respect George Washington for freeing America.

As someone who vociferously despises Great Man History and knows rather a lot about Washington...I hope you’re wrong.

But we should probably leave it at that.

 

[Lanefan]

Irrelevant. The point of the adventure is not the loot.

Sez who?

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Tolkien's Orcs and Trolls, for example, are inherently evil.

No, actually, they aren’t.

Someone already quoted Tolkien on the subject in this thread, in fact.

Orcs are bad, but not irredeemably so.